Good morning from Charleston. Yep. You heard that right. I’m in South Carolina. It’s my second trip over the last couple of weeks and it’s absolutely gorgeous here.

It’s interesting, I was at a restaurant the other night sitting at the bar and the woman next to me struck up a conversation and as we talked I was so effusive about Charleston she made a joke about it. It’s funny because I heard myself and realized that I was traveling over the last six months to so many different places and here I find myself sort of in my own backyard in a place that is charming and engaging, visually stimulating, full of history and people and things that are totally new to me. A whole world unto itself. I’m very busy on my project right now, but I am so eager to engage more with the town. It’s absolutely charming. I’m a little bit envious of the people that are taking these walking tours or actually here. They do a lot of horse and buggy rides in the evening and I need to find the time, and I will, to take a tour and to learn about the history. There’s so much American history here that I’m quite ignorant of. So there you have it. That’s what I’m doing. It’s really fun to be here.

So here’s what is on my mind this morning. This book popped into my mind and I’m recording right away. I haven’t even had coffee because I want to capture all of the things that are coming through my mind. You know how it is when you read a book …at least in my family, when we become passionate about something, we want to tell everybody, we want to share it with the world…and one of those books for me over the past, I don’t know, maybe five years was a book written by Michael Singer. It’s called ‘The Surrender Experiment.’

Most people know Michael Singer because they read ‘The Untethered Soul’ which had enormous success, and I read that too, but I absolutely loved The  Surrender Experiment. It was a book that I listened to on tape and I loved hearing him tell the story and without spoiling the book – I think the title tells you a lot – he made a decision.  I use that word very deliberately.He made a decision. You know I deeply and firmly believe that when one makes a decision, things shift. Things become clear. Revealed. Everything shifts when you make a decision. You don’t think about something. You don’t noodle things. You don’t wonder. You actually decide something without knowing the answer. Things shift in life. There is no doubt about that in my mind.

But anyway, back to my point. He made a decision that the through line and how he was going to conduct his life would be surrender. By surrender it meant he would accept whatever life threw his way no matter what. That was the main thing. No matter what he was going to accept what came his way. By way of background, in case you don’t know this, Michael Singer is the founder of WebMD. So, you can imagine that he is an extremely intelligent and successful person. Anyway, back to the story. This decision that he made to surrender to whatever came his way was predicated on his foundational belief that things would work out the way they’re meant to be in his life, no matter what. Now he had some extraordinarily unfortunate things happen to him. Very scary things. And surrender in his definition of it, or the way I viewed the way he talked about his story,  was about acceptance. No matter what happened, no matter what, he was going to trust and accept that things were working out the way they were supposed to work out.

So back to what I want to say. This book, profoundly affected me and I loved listening to it.I did everything I could to listen to the whole thing as quickly as possible. All I wanted to do was hear this story. Anyway, I think I must’ve bought like 15 copies of this book. I don’t even know who I gave it to. I just loved it and I wanted to share it. Anyway, so I think it popped into my mind today for a reason, because I find myself here in South Carolina in a totally new place, working on a project, that was wholly unexpected and which totally came out of left field. I know I mentioned in Tuesday’s episode that I was doing something new and I wasn’t trying to be mysterious about it, but I’ve been a little reluctant to share because I know that it can be very difficult to find work, especially when you’re over a certain age. And this opportunity came my way very quickly so I was a little bit trepidatious about sharing because I don’t want to be Pollyanna and say, Oh, once you decide everything goes your way because no, that is not what I believe. But I do believe when one makes a very clear decision –  when your whole body says I’m doing this – things shift. You become open in a new way. You become curious in a new way. You start noticing the crumbs  –  the clues that come your way – and that happened to me.

It’s not the first time in my life.I know it from even when I was telling the story about when I made the decision to leave New York for those five months (that became six), when I truly, decided –  when I felt that knowingness in my body that I was ready to go to leave New York – it’s funny as I’m saying this. It was a sort of surrender experiment. When I made that decision and pulled the car over on the side of the road and left those messages and signaled to the universe that I wanted this, everything started to fall in place. And one of the points I want to make here is I got an immediate telephone call – within 45 minutes I think it was – at which point I decided that no matter what I was going to go out in the world for those five months. In other words, that callback was sort of the response I needed to feel from the universe. It turns out that I was very fortunate and things worked out very much to my advantage. I sold some things very quickly. Someone who was looking for an apartment in New York took my space so that eased the financial burden of my travels.

The very same thing happened when I made this decision that I was really ready for a third act. For some people that may not seem like a big deal. To me, it felt like a big deal saying it and putting it out in a very public way that I was ready to do something new felt vulnerable to me for some reason. I think that’s in part because I had made attempts with much less conviction several times and I was doubting myself  do I really want to put this out there, because I felt like in a way it was going to be more difficult to change my mind.

Anyway, to bring this full circle, I think the reason this book The Surrender Experiment popped into my mind this morning in my quiet time – it felt like, I don’t know how to explain it – it felt sort of like a full circle moment because I didn’t know why I felt so passionate about this book at the time and I could see in that quiet moment how deeply Michael Singer’s story affected me.

You know, I hinted earlier that what I’m doing was something wholly unexpected. What happened was when I found this framing of the third act language, I really embraced it and I started putting it out there. The first response that I got, the call actually came on Easter morning and I couldn’t return it because I was on my way to church and then I had a whole day of lunch and activities so I had this eager anticipation all day. Then when I found out what the idea was, it totally burst my bubble. I was like, oh, I don’t want to do that. And I have to say, I think that that’s when I could see that the Surrender Experiment was lodged somewhere in my mind becausewhen I woke up the next morning, I thought to myself, Constance, what does it mean to walk your talk in this very moment? And for me, it was about being open and curious. And when I made the decision that my surrender experiment in the spirit of Michael Singer was going to be openness and curiosity, the whole thing became a game and it happened very quickly.

Let me open a parenthesis briefly here and tell you that what I’m doing is I’m working as the general manager or the general business manager of a family office which means that I am a trusted overseer of their affairs in many different realms. And one of the things that is so interesting about it, and that I could see when I became open to this idea, is that it plays to so much of my life experience and my skill sets. This piece about discretion and judgment and trust have been key elements in everything I’ve done over the last 25 or 30 years of my career.   I think that’s the reason the book popped into my mind this morning. It was an opportunity to chuckle with the universe and I started my day with this deep sense of gratitude. That’s a perfect place to end for today.

Have a wonderful weekend. Until next time, from my heart to yours.